Philosophy
Staff
Duncan Pritchard
2002 Abstracts
- 'Recent Work on Radical Skepticism', American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (2002), 215-57.
ABSTRACT. This article surveys recent developments in the treatment of the epistemological problem of radical skepticism along with the stimulus for these developments in the work of Dretske, Nozick and others. The topics discussed roughly fall under five headings: (i) the 'relevant alternatives' approach to skepticism including the associated development of a 'modal' epistemology and 'infallibilist' accounts of radical skepticism; (ii) 'contextualist' anti-skeptical theories, of both a semantic and an inferential variety; (iii) the employment of the Wittgensteinian notion of a "hinge" proposition in the context of the skeptical debate; (iv) the 'neo-Moorean' response to radical skepticism; (v) the epistemological externalism/internalism distinction and its relevance to the emergence of the 'new skeptics'.
- 'McKinsey Paradoxes, Radical Scepticism, and the Transmission of Knowledge across Known Entailments', Synthese 130 (2002), 279-302.
ABSTRACT. A great deal of discussion in the recent literature has been devoted to the so-called 'McKinsey' paradox which purports to show that semantic externalism is incompatible with the sort of authoritative knowledge that we take ourselves to have of our own thought contents. In this paper I examine one influential epistemological response to this paradox which is due to Crispin Wright and Martin Davies. I argue that it fails to meet the challenge posed by McKinsey but that, if it is set within an externalist epistemology, it may have application to a related paradox that concerns the problem of radical scepticism.
- 'Resurrecting the Moorean Response to the Sceptic', International Journal of Philosophical Studies 10 (2002), 283-307.
ABSTRACT. G. E. Moore famously offered a strikingly straightforward response to the radical sceptic which simply consisted of the claim that one could know, on the basis of one's knowledge that one has hands, that there exists an external world. In general, the Moorean response to scepticism maintains that we can know the denials of sceptical hypotheses on the basis of our knowledge of everyday propositions. In the recent literature two proposals have been put forward to try to accommodate, to varying extents, this Moorean thesis. On the one hand, there are those who endorse an externalist version of contextualism, such as Keith DeRose, who have claimed that there must be some contexts in which Moore is right. More radically still, Ernest Sosa has expanded on this externalist thesis by arguing that, contra DeRose's contextualism, Moore may be right in all contexts. In this paper I evaluate these claims and argue that, suitably modified, one can resurrect the main elements of the Moorean anti-sceptical thesis.
- 'Radical Scepticism, Epistemological Externalism and Closure', Theoria 69 (2002), 129-61.
ABSTRACT. Many of the proposals put forward to answer the radical sceptical paradox in the recent literature have involved either blocking the sceptic’s highly intuitive use of the 'closure' principle that knowledge is closed under known entailment or, equally implausibly, 'contextualizing' the knowledge operator. In contrast, it is argued here that an externalist theory of knowledge, properly understood, holds the key to meeting the sceptical paradox in a manner that keeps our basic epistemological intuitions intact. In particular, it is shown how, far from failing in sceptical arguments, the sceptic’s use of the closure principle is in fact validated by an externalist epistemology. A diagnosis of the main argument for non-closure offered by Fred Dretske is then given in the light of these remarks.
- 'Two Forms of Epistemological Contextualism', Grazer Philosophische Studien 64 (2002), 19-55.
ABSTRACT. The recent popularity of contextualist treatments of the key epistemic concepts has tended to obscure the differences that exist between the various kinds of contextualist theses on offer. The aim of this paper is to contribute towards rectifying this problem by exploring two of the main formulations of the contextualist position currently on offer in the literature - the 'semantic' contextualist thesis put forward by Keith DeRose and David Lewis, and the 'inferential' contextualist thesis advanced by Michael Williams. It is argued that by evaluating these theses in the light of each other one can gain a deeper understanding of the contextualist position. In particular, it is argued that this relative evaluation highlights one interesting way in which contextualism might be developed.
- 'Are Economic Decisions Rational?: Path-Dependence, Lock-In, and "Hinge" Propositions', Reason in Practice 2 (2002), 29-40.
ABSTRACT. A great deal of discussion in the contemporary literature in economics has been devoted to the so-called phenomenon of 'path dependence'. Examples of path dependence are supposed to show that the neo-classical model of economic activity, including that of economic decision-making, is out-of-step with actual practice and should be replaced with a more evolutionary-orientated account. It is argued here, however, that this debate has been hampered by the fact that the usual three-tiered way of understanding path dependence offered by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis fails to capture what proponents of the view have in mind. By examining the way in which the notion of path dependence is often described in terms borrowed from the philosophy of science, it is contended that we can gain a more accurate understanding of this notion by recasting it in the light of the Wittgensteinian conception of a "hinge" proposition. Furthermore, it is argued that this modified account of path dependence may be resistant to some of the key objections that have been levelled against this notion.